The minutes in between the weather report and the sports cast have always been filled with soft images of rainbows, golden sun on green leaves and that one plantation-style house in Manoa where every film crew shoots (the one with the nice porch).

Out of that misty sameness bursts a figure in a powder blue, high-waters leisure suit, surfer slippers and fingers full of gold jewelry, truckin' on down to board a flight to Maui on a mission to measure a jackfruit.

"He's the Interisland Man of Mystery, but to you and me, he's Interisland Steve."

And he's unlike any local airline commercial you've ever seen. It's one thing for a cab company or a car dealer or even a local bank to take a comic tone in a commercial, but airlines traditionally play it straight.

Brett Wagner wrote and directed the Interisland Steve spots for Island Air through ad agency Communications Pacific. Island Air is forging a new identity after being Aloha Island Air for many years.

"All of us felt that Island Air should really do something to set themselves apart from the other airlines, not to try to compete for the sort of nostalgic Hawai'i image that Aloha and Hawaiian both have owned for a long time," Wagner said.

So he came up with some ideas that would be attention-getting and funny and far away from the typical shave ice/slippers/plumeria images of local life.

"He puts on his bling AFTER he goes through security."

Local actor Dezmond Gilla plays Interisland Steve, a low-fiving frequent flier with a big grin and a tiny carry-on. Wag-ner worked with Gilla on a commercial for KFC a year and a half ago. Gilla played a security guard lulled to a happy nap after grinding a bucket of chicken.

"I knew that with a character like Interisland Steve, a lot of the weight was going to be on the charisma of the actor, to make him fun without being annoying," Wagner said. "He has a kind of cocky quality about him, but you want him to seem sort of vulnerable and loveable at the same time.

"His drink? Guava nectar, straight up."

In the print ads, Interisland Steve subs for a wounded cliff diver on Maui and, dressed as a cowboy, breaks in a new pair of chaps on the Big Island. Man of mystery, indeed. We're not even sure who he works for.

"He's in the same category of characters as Austin Powers and Kramer from 'Seinfeld,' with just a dash of James Bond and Indiana Jones thrown in there," Wagner said.

The other breakout role in the ad campaign has been that of the wild boar in the spot where Interisland Steve travels to Kaua'i to conduct a wild boar census. Porky the boar came as part of the shooting location.

"We'd gone up there and met him and really liked him and, of course, he was covered with mud," Wagner said. "But when we showed up on the day of the shoot, they had bathed him and hosed him down and they'd even polished his tusks so my first reaction was, 'He looks too good! He looks too slick!' But he has a real personality that comes through."

Porky worked for snacks, favoring hot dog buns. But they had to be moldy hot dog buns. He worked for 20 minutes before losing interest and wandering off, but he still delivered a solid performance.

So where is all this creative freedom tethered to ticket sales and passenger numbers? For Wagner, the feeling he's trying to get across is that flying between islands can be, well, not the grueling ordeal it so often is.

"I think we all sort of feel that interisland travel used to be easier than it is now and that it should be easy and commonplace, and that you're not just going for a special occasion; you're going for any number of reasons, so to bring back kind of a casual, easygoing attitude about the whole thing," he said.

Wagner is considering a contest in which people submit their ideas for new interisland adventures for the man of mystery. The winning entry would be made into a 30-second commercial and the winner would get an interisland flight.

"To me, the number one rule of advertising is 'get noticed' and to do that, you need to be different and you need to be new, so that's what we tried to do with this," Wagner said.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.